In recent years, in a photographic processing services industry, photosensitive materials that can remarkably shorten the time required for an image-forming process including steps of exposure, processing, and drying and realize a high image quality have been demanded as means for improving productivity and services for users. To comply with this demand, for instance, new exposure systems have been developed and marketed (e.g., Frontier 350, trade name, manufactured by Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.). Those exposure systems shorten the period from exposure to the initiation of processing (referred to as a “latent-image time” in the art) to approximately 10 seconds and perform rapid processing in which a total processing time from exposure to completion of drying is approximately 4 minutes. In other words, those systems are excellent in shortening the time required for delivering photographic prints to customers after orders. By using those systems, therefore, the customers enjoy services of receiving the photographic prints within an hour or so after orders.
Furthermore, each of the systems (e.g., Frontier 350, above) is able to readily give a high quality print by utilizing information from a negative-film of taken photography to execute image processing. In addition, such a system is also suitably designed for print output of digital image recording media such as digital cameras which have become widely used. Therefore, the above systems are popularized at a high rate in the market.
In general, in the case of shortening the time of the processing step, it has been known that its white background portions of a print may be stained because of a colored ingredients such as a sensitizing dye in a light-sensitive material, which is likely to remain due to insufficient washout. As means for solving such a problem, in JP-A-06-230501 (“JP-A” means unexamined published Japanese patent application), there is disclosed the use of a sensitizing dye having an aromatic group as a substituent, where the aromatic group has a specific structure different from a phenyl group. However, it is insufficient to overcome the problem and, in some cases, an increase in fogging may be caused and stains at the white background portions of a print deteriorate. Compounds well known in the art as anti-fogging agents, such as those described in “The Theory of the Photographic Process”, 4th edition, pp. 396–387, 1977, written by T. H. James, are effective to prevent the generation of fogging in actuality but causing another problem of a considerable decrease in sensitivity. Furthermore, technologies for improving the remaining of color, such as the use of a water-soluble diaminostilbene-series fluorescent brightening agent and the use of a highly hydrophilic sensitizing dye (e.g., JP-A-06-329936), a method of facilitating the washout of a sensitizing dye by reducing a dry film thickness along with a swelled film thickness, and so on have been investigated in the art. However, they are not always satisfactory ones. Therefore, it has been desired to provide a technology that can give a print stable and high quality with a white background less subjected to staining (coloring) in the rapid photographic processing.